Choosing a university is one of those decisions where almost everyone tells you it's huge — and then nobody actually tells you what to look at beyond rankings, prestige, and "good vibes" from open days. After spending way too many hours researching this, here are the questions I wish someone had handed me a year before applications opened. Some are obvious. Most aren't.
1. What do third-year students say, not first-years?
Open day energy is real, but it's also performance. The people you meet are usually first-years high on novelty or staff who are paid to be enthusiastic. The ones with actual perspective are third- or fourth-year students. They've seen what the program promised vs. what it delivered.
Find them on student forums or LinkedIn. Send a polite message: "I'm considering your program — would you be willing to share what's worked and what hasn't?" Most are happy to answer.
2. How big are the actual classes?
Brochures love phrases like "small group teaching". The reality varies wildly. Ask: how many students per lecture in year one? How many per seminar? How many per personal mentor? The difference between a class of 20 and a class of 200 is enormous — for relationships with teachers, for asking questions, for actually learning anything.
3. What does the daily schedule actually look like?
Some programs are 30 hours of contact time per week. Others are 10. Both are valid, but they shape your life completely differently. Ten hours sounds great until you realize you're expected to study 30 more hours unsupervised — which most 19-year-olds, lovely as they are, struggle with.
Ask current students for their typical week. The truth is in the schedule, not the prospectus.
4. What jobs do graduates actually end up in?
Most universities have employment statistics. Most also know how to make those statistics sound great. Look past the headline percentage and into specifics: where exactly are graduates working? In what cities? At what salary? Is it the field they studied or did they pivot completely?
If a tourism management program produces mostly graduates working in unrelated retail jobs, that's information worth having before you commit three years.
The university you choose decides the people you'll spend three years around. That matters more than any ranking.
5. Can you live somewhere normal?
This sounds boring. It isn't. The housing market in some university towns is brutal — Amsterdam, Utrecht, parts of Germany and the UK. You can spend three years studying brilliantly and remember the period mostly for the stress of finding a room.
Ask: is there guaranteed first-year housing? What's the average price for a room? Can current students walk you through how they found theirs? If the answer is "everyone struggles", that's not a small detail.
6. What's the city like for the version of you that won't be studying?
You'll have evenings, weekends, summers. Will you spend three years somewhere you actually want to be? A campus in a small town can be magical for some people and isolating for others. A big city is exciting but expensive and exhausting.
Visit on a regular Tuesday afternoon, not just open day. Walk around. Eat somewhere local. See if you can imagine your life there.
7. How is the actual teaching evaluated?
Universities have very different cultures around teaching. Some treat it as core mission. Others treat it as the thing professors do reluctantly between research projects. This affects you every single day for years.
Look up student satisfaction surveys (NSE in the Netherlands, NSS in the UK). Read the comments — actual ones, not just the score. Patterns emerge fast.
8. What's the financial picture, honestly?
Tuition is just the start. Add living costs, books, transport, the inevitable life-event expenses. Build a real spreadsheet. If your program is in another country, factor in currency volatility and the surprise costs of being abroad (registration fees, health insurance, residency permits).
Then ask: how do you afford this? Loan? Family? Working? Combination? Run the numbers before you fall in love with a place. Falling in love comes with its own cognitive bias.
9. What does the program let you do besides the program?
Internships. Study abroad. Research projects. Side hustles supported by the university. Student associations that aren't just party-focused. The "extra-curricular" stuff turns out to be where a lot of long-term value lives — including the friendships and the line items on your eventual CV.
10. What's your gut telling you, after the rational part?
I know this sounds soft. But after you've done all the spreadsheets, all the comparisons, all the open days — sit with it for a week. Notice which program your mind keeps drifting back to without effort. That's data too.
Don't let your gut override the math, but don't let the math drown out the gut either.
The honest part
You won't pick the perfect university. There isn't one. The version of you graduating at 21 will be different from the one applying at 17, and the program that fit at 17 might not fit at 21. That's okay. People switch. People take detours. Almost nobody graduates from the exact program they entered, with the exact career they imagined.
The point of choosing well is to give yourself a strong starting point — not a guarantee. Pick the place where you can grow, even if you grow in directions you don't yet know.
And whichever you pick: be kind to your future self. Take the open day. Ask the awkward question. Trust your gut. You've got this.